


The Woman With No Name

by LuxaLucifer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Origin Story, Santa Fe, friendship? idk, mccree and ashe meet for the first time, trying to humanize ashe and make sense of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-10-14 16:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17512265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxaLucifer/pseuds/LuxaLucifer
Summary: "Elizabeth isn’t much for watching movies anymore—she’s got places to be, windows to escape from—but when she was young she’d curl up with B.O.B. and marathon old Westerns. It’s all coming alive around her, but she doesn’t know her dialogue."A stranger arrives in the town of Santa Fe. With the town on the brink of gang warfare, a chance meeting with a local ruffian named Jesse McCree alters her path forever.





	1. A Fistful of Dollars

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is going to be a three-parter, but also part of a larger series about McCree, or about the people who care about McCree, depending on how you look at it. This beginning part was written out of a desire to make Overwatch's bad canon make sense (this whole thing should be, at the time of writing it, canon compliant), as well as trying to help me like Ashe more, because I think Blizzard did a poor job of developing her. So, basically, I hope you like it!

Elizabeth is young, her pockets are full, and she is free in the streets of Sante Fe. She cannot help the first, she had no part in the second, but the third was all her doing, an elaborate escape plan taken place during a family trip (brought about by her third suspension from school this year) to the rural outskirts to the Southwest’s most scenic city. She has B.O.B. to thank, but she’ll have to do it later—he was a necessary sacrifice to make it out on her own for the day.

Everywhere she looks, there are tourists. She’s one of them, technically, but she can’t help but turn her nose up in distaste as they chatter, waving their Hawaiian shirts and matching cowboy hats, mimicking the holos of old Spaghetti Westerns while they munch on beans out of a can. Elizabeth wants authenticity. She wants the real Santa Fe, and she’s going to find it. Then, when she’s ready, she’ll turn her location back on and deal with the parental aftermath.

Elizabeth ducks out of the busy walking thoroughfare, away from sand-swept cobblestones that she’s pretty sure were never authentic, into a dingy alleyway. Passing trash bags and dumpsters, she follows a self-made path of the shadiest alleys she can find, until the streets she’s in give her that prickling on the back of her neck that means she’s in a bad neighborhood. Try to rob me, she thinks belligerently, although, if anyone was listening to her thoughts, they’d know she doesn’t have a gun on her.

Away from the tourists, the streets are emptier. Elizabeth pulls her shoulders up and back, matching the posture of the people around her now. The flea-bitten woman working over her chew, back to the closed grated of an out-of-order hovercar mechanic, never moves, but her eyes follow Elizabeth. The graffiti on the walls here is all in Spanish, and the same symbols keep cropping up. Gangs, probably. Sante Fe’s tourism is only matched by its danger. People seem to like it that way, because no one’s doing anything about it.

The sun feels hotter here. Sweat trickles down her back and she walks the streets, close enough to the city limits now that she glimpses the edges of desert every so often. The world is so full of people, so brimming with technology, that she can hardly believe that places like this still exist. Beats all the rules of boarding schools. Beats parents that would rather be on the top floor of a penthouse than a school play. 

She turns a corner, and there’s an explosion of color. The neighborhood is still bad, but people live here, and they have decorated it with murals of sunsets and vaqueros, stringing laundry overhead on lines just like they do in the movies and keeping the windows open for fresh air instead of relying on air conditioning. The buildings have been updated, but their sleek finish is gone, lost to layers of dirt and everyday wear. Elizabeth cranes her neck upward, looking at the open shutters and hanging clothing. 

“Now, don’t be like that. I came all the way out here just to see you.”

Elizabeth’s gaze snaps back down. She tenses, but no one is talking to her. Instead, a big teenager, tall and lanky, maybe two years older than her, has his back to her. He is talking to a shopkeeper, leaning his elbow on her counter, his posture slack. There’s nothing to fear here, it tells her, but she doesn’t relax. The shopkeeper, whose business looks out into the derelict road, slams a pack of cigars down on the counter, sliding it under the plexiglass protector. Elizabeth has never been in a store where violent theft was an option, but this business has posters with criminals taped outside it, so she shouldn’t be surprised. As she approaches, she sees that some of the posters fluttering in the wind have big Xs on them. 

“Here are your cigars, Jesse. Run on home, now, unless you have the money to buy something else?” 

The teenager addressed as Jesse whistles long and low. “Now, that just ain’t fair. What about last time? You slipped me something a little extra then.”

 The woman behind the counter sighs so audibly that Elizabeth can sense it. “I’ll get you one of those Three Musketeers bars. I know you like those.”

Elizabeth almost doesn’t see what he does next, just for a moment when she turns her back. His hand slips off the counter and into the display to his left, where he retrieves several comics. She blinks, and he’s no longer holding them. Their display, though, is still empty.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, tipping his wide-brim hat when the woman passes him the candy bar. “You always keep me coming back, Charlene.”

“You’re all bark and no bite, Jesse,” she replies. “Come back when you mean all those pretty words you say.”

“Hey there now,” he replies, finishing the conversation. She laughs, so there must have been something in his expression. Elizabeth wishes she’d seen it. 

He turns around. Elizabeth is just standing there, clearly staring at him. The teenager smirks, seeing her looking. “Who do we have here?”

“That’s none of your business,” she says, crossing her arms and lifting her chin.

From the front, he’s almost exactly what her brain conjured up. Shaggy dark hair in need of a haircut, just a hint of stubble on his chin, the smirk plastered across his lips is enough to make her want to hit him. Skin dark enough that she knows, from the area’s history, that it’s not just a tan. The denim tight around his hips is worn, and the brown leather cowboy boots he’s wearing match the hat pulled down over his ears. His forearms, exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his plaid cotton shirt, are brown, his hands calloused as he sticks his thumbs into his waistband, adjusting his huge belt buckle. Between his lips rest a cigar, fatter than the ones Elizabeth’s father smokes.

He’s the coolest guy Elizabeth has ever seen.

“All right,” he says, words dripping slow like honey off his tongue. “I guess that’s none of my business.” 

He starts walking away. Elizabeth begins to follow, but remembers herself. She’s the heir to a fortune she never asked for, and besides that, she’s too good to just trail after some hillbilly with a smooth accent. She’s been to Paris, to London, to Johannesburg, to Nepal—this boy has probably never been outside a hundred miles of here. She’s seen more than he’s ever dreamt of, thousands of miles past these scattered graffiti over adobe-sand buildings. She turns away.

“Duck,” he says. It’s a command. She ducks, her martial arts training, years of utilizing it in schoolyard brawls, kicking into gear.

 Bullets whiz over her head. She straightens back up to find the stranger with a gun already drawn, pulled out in the fraction of a second that it took her to avoid the bullets. The street, already nearly empty, is devoid of people now—even the shopkeeper is gone, her window covered with a bulletproof grate.

Then, the street isn’t devoid. People ooze out of alleyways and swagger into the sunlight with their guns drawn, many of them pieces older than the Omnic War. There are almost as many scars as weapons.

 “Where’s that money you owe me, McCree?” A sharp-tongued woman with more tattoos than clothing mimics McCree’s stance mockingly, her blaze of green hair braided down her back.

 “That ain’t me,” says her stranger. “You know that’s above my head.”

 “Way I see it,” she replies. “I send a message through you, and they’ll get me the cash. Best case scenario, you lick your wounds in the bullpen.”

 “Well, that’s not nice,” he says. “You know I just got out.”

 Elizabeth isn’t much for watching movies anymore—she’s got places to be, windows to escape from—but when she was young she’d curl up with B.O.B. and marathon old Westerns, the public domain ones they play on the free channels for poor people. It’s all coming alive around her, but she doesn’t know her dialogue. She wants to. She will.

Several guns cock at once, including her stranger’s. He shoots first, and a man goes down with a scream, clutching his leg. After that, it’s chaos, and Elizabeth joins it. Her stranger moves in front of her, trying to protect her, but she ducks away and lets him get distracted by the gunfire. They both jump, dodging bullets as they roll away, and with the action centered on him, she comes to her feet behind one of the thugs, jabbing her fist to his neck in a rough approximation of what her martial arts teacher called utilizing a pressure point. He goes down long enough for her to grab his weapon out of his hand, turning it around and pressing it against his stomach. She pulls the trigger, prepared for the recoil, and his scream attracts everyone’s attentions away from her stranger.

 The thug is clutching his gutshot, moaning incoherently, blood bubbling from his lips. He was holding a shotgun. Heavy in her small hands, she likes its heft, and pulls it back so she can aim it at anyone who looks too long at her. The gunfire is stopped, and several bodies are on the ground—her stranger’s work. He’s looking at her like the rest of them, but there isn’t fear and anger in the lines around his eyes. He’s smirking, actually, smirking around his facial hair. Elizabeth smirks back and readies her weapon.

“Ya’ll done here?” she says, adding a twang of her own to her accent. He raises an eyebrow and the smirk grows. Prickles of embarrassment wash over her whole body.

Three of the four remaining thugs leave, walking away fast enough it doesn’t count as running. The fourth, the green-haired woman, narrows her golden eyes and spits on the dry ground. “I’d call it a lucky shot, but it ain’t hard to shoot a double-barrel at point blank range. I’m gonna be keeping an eye out for you, and you’ll soon wish I wasn’t.”

She walks away, turning her back on Elizabeth and her stranger, who is putting his gun back in his holster. The air smells like gunpowder. Elizabeth raises the shotgun and aims. She’s seen the scatter, knows the difficulty of making it count at this distance, so she aims real careful. There is another guttural scream, and she goes down, her braid splattered with blood. Elizabeth’s stranger isn’t smirking now.

“Fight was over,” he says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t take kindly to threats,” says Elizabeth. The first thug she shot is still writhing in pain. If he gets back to anyone and describes her, her father will be real pressed to get her out of trouble, and the legal fees will mean he’ll restrict her freedom even further. She shoots him in the head to finish the job.

“You killed before?” says her stranger. The men and women he took out are dragging themselves away, fingers coated slick with their own gore. The sun is beginning to lower in the sky, bringing a glow to the outlines of the adobe buildings. Santa Fe is one of the most beautiful places she’s ever been. A man, arm broken and leg shot, makes it to a gutter.

Elizabeth shrugs. “They were gonna kill you, weren’t they? Should be no skin off your back.”

He shrugs back. At some point, he lost his cigar, and he lights another one with the deftness of a man who’s been doing it a good while. Not a man—a teenager like her, if a little older and rougher. She’ll learn the latter soon enough. “You saved me from a good beating. She was trying to resurrect the old Deadlock Gang. Crowd I run with ain’t so fond of them, and vice versa.”

It’s getting cold out now. With the sun dropping, the shadows are getting long. Her stranger looks like Clint Eastwood, about to go for a long drink of water after a hard day’s ride. If Elizabeth has her way, things are only just beginning. 

“Seems you have me at a disadvantage,” he says. “You know I’m McCree, but I don’t even know your name.” 

There is only the briefest hesitation before she says, “Ashe.”

“See you around, Ashe.”

He walks away, hands back on his belt, slow and steady. Elizabeth herself leaves before any authorities come to half-heartedly investigate the murders of gang members they secretly wanted off the streets anyway. She sneaks back to the hotel through the second story window and washes the blood off her hands before joining her family for dinner. She’ll meet Jesse McCree again. She’ll make sure of it.   


	2. For a Few Dollars More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay on this! I'll get the last chapter up sooner, I promise. :)

It takes six months. Ashe has something to work towards now, and she discovers that, when she puts her mind to something other than mean rebellion, she’s damn good at it. She starts going to her father’s business parties, starts paying attention, and she hears things. The people who run the world don’t pay attention to little girls, and Ashe hears things: dangerous things, secret things, interesting things. She starts forming a plan.

She moves money her parents won’t miss into a private bank account (opened with the help of lax laws and lax parental control) and memorizes the names of contacts. She learns everything there is to know about military hardware, spending her after-school hours memorizing how to operate every manner of weapon there is—or at least any weapon someone might want to buy. There’s more to a gang than looking cool. They’re a business like any other, and while her parents might not have taught her much, Ashe knows how to run a business.

She buys a house in Santa Fe. She spends two weeks with her heart in her stomach, wondering when her parents will find out and make her plans twice as difficult, but they don’t notice anything from their penthouse apartments halfway across the world. It cements her decision, brings her to make the last few calls, to cement the first few purchases.

When she leaves, B.O.B. comes with her. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t have to. 

She deletes everything as she leaves—technology makes it hard to start anew, but she’s prepared for this for months, and she knows exactly what to do. She takes nothing, not even a photo, as she erases everything from her past. B.O.B. is the only family that matters, and he isn’t going anywhere.

* * *

“Been a while,” says Ashe. She’s mastered the twang, that drawl she hadn’t had six months ago. She practiced in the mirror, and, when she was satisfied, secretly hired a tutor to make sure it was authentic, that anyone from New Mexico wouldn’t think to mock her for her affected accent. Soon, it won’t be fake. Nothing about her will be.

“I don’t come to town too often,” says McCree. He’s exactly as she remembered, but bigger. Clean shaven now, too, like he wasn’t happy with the beard. While they stand, he wipes beads of sweat off his brow with a stained bandana, trying it back around his neck after.

 “Too busy in the slammer?” She regrets it as soon as she says it. Slammer was a bad choice of word—inauthentic—and she shouldn’t remember something he said six months ago. Makes it look like she’s been running that day over and over in her head, how good it felt to fight, how warm the blood was as it dried on her hands.

 “I don’t make a habit of running into the law,” he replies. “No matter what you’ve heard.”

 Ashe wasn’t looking for McCree. She’s on a stakeout, running recon for a robbery she’s planning with the first few members of what she hopes to build into something more. She turned a corner into an alley and found him, hands in his pockets, leaning against the rough adobe of an out-of-business saloon. His hat is pulled so low over his face that it took a moment to recognize him; the lit cigar in his mouth was the tell that triggered her memory.

 “And what might I have heard?”

 McCree shrugs. “Lots of things going around.”

 Ashe is going to reply with something meaningless that sounds good, which seems to be the way around here, but she takes a second look around. Ashe is standing in this dark alley behind a black market munition dealers’ warehouse—what’re the odds that McCree just picked this place to take a smoke break? She doubts he cares about the architecture of a bone dry storm drain.

 “You with anyone?”

 McCree gives her the once over. She doesn’t stand taller—she’s already at her full height. “What’s it to you?”

 “If you’re alone, I can cut you in. Better odds with a group.”

 She’s seen him shoot, but more importantly, he’s seen her shoot. He settles back against the adobe wall for a long few seconds before nodding and saying, “Alright. I’m in.”

* * *

“This is a much better score than what I was planning,” says McCree, going through the stacks of bills with the glee of a kid in a candy store.

 Ashe laughs. It feels good to do it with someone who isn’t B.O.B., and with someone who isn’t on the payroll. “What were you planning?”

 “I heard that closed down bar still had some liquor in it. Was going to take a peek.”

 Ashe blinks. That’s not what she was expecting. Some of the men snicker. She’s already having enough trouble controlling them. They’re not used to working with someone so young, and she’s having to pull out all the stops when it comes to ordering them around, especially with their own leader, Finn, always questioning her knowledge. She grabs McCree by his leather jacket, pulling him into one of the side rooms of her hideout (a converted house in a decent neighborhood, which is not her favorite look, but it’ll do).

 “What did you go to prison for?” she hisses.

 McCree raises his eyebrows, never dropping his smirk. “No bullshit?”

 “I think you know by now I’m not the type for bullshit.” There were more people in the building than either she or her men had expected, and she’d responded accordingly. McCree had been helped her carry the bodies.  

 “I spent three months in juvie for stealing cattle.”

 She knows he doesn’t like killing, but there’re plenty of other crimes—assault, battery, grand theft auto, that she’d have expected before that one. Looking at the state of his clothing, she’d expect a public urination charge before _cattle theft_. She kicks the carpet so hard that the point of her boot tears a hole, revealing the wood flooring underneath. That’ll cost to repair.

 “I don’t live in Santa Fe,” he adds. “I’ve got roots on a farm outside the city.” He’s still got that goddamned smirk on his face, like she hasn’t brought a cattle thief into her burgeoning crime organization, like she didn’t get the inspiration for the whole thing from running into him on the street. Her face is burning bright red; she can tell from the heat on her cheeks.

 “Did you say juvie?” she asks. “How old are you, McCree?” She’d assumed him to be eighteen or nineteen the first time they met, what with his strong jawline and height, but now she’s wondering. She’s wondering hard.

 “Funny story,” he says. His shit-eating grin is growing. This must be a conversation he’s had before, one he likes having. There’s a smugness in his stance she doesn’t like one bit. “That first day we met was my fifteenth birthday.”

Ashe swallows every emotion she’s feeling so she doesn’t give him the pleasure of reacting. “Well, well, well,” she replies. “You’re a good shot for a fifteen-year-old.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” he says, stuffing his share of the wad of bills down behind his belt. “I’ve gotta get back home—I’ve got to help my grandpa with a drive that’s gonna take up the next month or so, but I’ll be back in Santa Fe. Hit me up. 

“And how will I find you?”

“I’m sure it won’t be a problem. See you around.”

He tips his hat to her on his way out, and she can see the child in him for the first time. He acts like a cowboy from another century, but even a farm boy couldn’t have avoided the modern world growing up. He must really want to believe in it. Part of Ashe does too. 

* * *

The next time Ashe sees McCree it’s lounging around the backside of a repair shop, wrapping tough cigarettes with tobacco dregs. She’s on her way to a bank robbery, half-hearted mask in place, half-wanting the world to know it’s her who’s planning to burn it to the ground. He walks in stride beside her without an invitation, and she doesn’t tell him to get lost.

That night, McCree’s lighting Cuban cigars.

* * *

They meet in a bar, McCree emerging from the men’s bathroom with shaky knees and swollen lips. Ashe buys them both a drink. Halfway through the whiskey, one of McCree’s buddies recognize him, and Ashe finds herself in the midst of broken beer bottles and flying fists. 

 Twenty minutes later they’re stealing motorcycles from Los Muertos and headed out to the open country, wind in their hair. She wakes up hungover in an irrigation ditch, makeup smeared and McCree’s hair in her mouth. Her heart is hammering in her chest. She smiles. 

* * *

There are diamonds, and a party, and two teenagers so drunk they forget the way back to their base. By the next morning Ashe can only remember bits and pieces, but finding McCree pantsless and with strings of diamonds covering the important bits jogs her memory. When she turns on the news all anyone can talk about are the celebrities sobbing about their lost jewels. The photos of her are blurry, and while McCree’s are clear, to the authorities, everyone in Santa Fe looks like him.

* * *

The weapons dealer calls Ashe a tart, slaps her ass, tells her she was almost as sexy as she is feisty. She breaks his teeth in right then, but while she’s getting ready for bed that night, tipsy enough to sleep well, McCree shatters her window into pieces and holds up a lighter.

Ashe wasn’t named for the flame, but she’s plenty good at starting them. 

* * *

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. “We work good together.”

They’re sitting around after a decent haul, their pockets stuffed full of cash and cigarettes. McCree brought the cards, and he’s slowly drying Ashe’s men to the bone through poker. He’s probably cheating, but she can’t figure out how yet. When she does, she’ll join.

“I’ve been thinking too,” she replies, like this is as new to her as it is to him. “We’re making plenty of dough, but it’s all small stuff. We should think bigger picture.”

“Yeah?” McCree’s got new chaps, white ones that stand out on the streets. She hasn’t seen the worn farmhand plaid in weeks.

She takes a stroll around the card table, hiding her laughter at B.O.B.’s hand. He’s a good poker player—he taught her—but McCree’s just doing that well. She’ll catch him sooner or later and win back Nunez’s trousers. What she’ll do with them, she hasn’t decided. 

Finn’s the only one at the table with any chance left. Head of the mercenaries she’s hired, she likes him half as much as McCree, which means she tolerates him twice as well as all his men and women. He’s fallen into line of late, and besides, with that five o’clock shadow and enough muscle to match a bull, he’s not so bad to look at.

“People’ve been trying to resurrect that old Deadlock Gang,” says McCree, pushing even more poker chips forward. “The one from the ‘70s. 1970s, I mean. Think we got a shot at it?”

“I always liked their symbol,” says Finn. “The skull with the lock in it. Might not be the most original, but it’ll scare people away.”

Finn lays down his hand, casually conceding. Ashe doesn’t miss the wink she levels McCree’s way. She rolls her eyes. All Finn’s mercenaries with no interest or love for their little business follow her ass with their eyes, but she can’t get the guys with a decent personality to pay attention. It doesn’t matter. Ashe doesn’t need to chase.

“How about it?” says Finn. “If we become something official, hell, I’ll drop my rates.”

“You’ll do more than drop your rates,” says Ashe. “We have to be in this together.”

Ashe meets B.O.B. and McCree’s eyes. They’ve both been there since the beginning, in one way or another. B.O.B. nods ever so slightly, her eternal rock in a world she’s constantly shaking up. He puts his fist out into the center of the table. McCree, much less stable but, in many ways, easier company, doesn’t sit up for a long second, leaning back into his chair. Beyond the easy smirk shadowed by the brim of his ten gallon, Ashe can see his few wheels turning. Her stomach lurches—the idea of him not agreeing never occurred to her.

“I’m in,” he says. “We’ve been having some good fun here. I do have some roots elsewhere I gotta attend to now and then, but that shouldn’t be a problem.” Casually, almost lazily, he joins his hand with B.O.B.’s.

“We all have something,” says Finn. His eyes are narrowed while he contemplates dollar signs in his head. Their weapons have been selling well, and they’re just starting to attract the attention of other gangs for their success. With the right planning, the right strategy, this could be more profitable than mercenary wages could dream of.

Finn puts his hand in the center of the table. Ashe joins with hers and wishes she could save this image, the sight of these men come together because of her. Because of her, Deadlock is going to work. Because of her, these men have somewhere to go.

* * *

 

Their first true firefight. The new Deadlock versus the Santa Fe branch of Los Muertos. It’s a bloodbath, one that’s determined by accuracy and skill rather than the luck of the draw. Ashe tries to keep count between her and McCree, but at the end of the day, she only has the totals of the dead. The other gang retreats back to Mexico. People begin to talk about Deadlock, and they aren’t speaking of the past. 

* * *

Ashe is undressing when she gets the text. It’s from a number she recognizes as McCree’s—she doesn’t have it saved because he so rarely uses it, preferring to annoy the hell out of her by showing up when and where he wants, only half-aware of other people’s plans.

‘the matador, pls’ lights up on her screen. Ashe starts putting on her clothing, but slowly, not convinced this really matters. The Matador’s been around a long, long, time, and she knows what it caters to. She doesn’t have much of a desire to party at the moment.

About five minutes later, there’s another text: ‘i need you.’ Goosebumps raise on her arms. No one has ever said that to her before. 

She’s out the door in three, fully dressed and glowering at anyone who looks at her too long. The streets are far from empty at this time of night, but she sees no one as she speeds through them on her stolen motorcycle, the red paint glinting dark in the reflection of the streetlights. There are few in Santa Fe left who’d face her, even in the shadows. That’s how Ashe likes it.

The streets might be empty, but The Matador isn’t, even at this late hour. Ashe doesn’t get carded despite being underage and doesn’t get questioned despite being a lone woman entering a bar full of shirtless men in cowboy hats. The bar isn’t one of those clubs with all the pulsing lights and grimy dance floors—that’s not McCree’s style. No, this place is old-fashioned, with a wooden bar countertop and posters of old Western films on the wall. The jukebox is playing Johnny Cash, although the volume is still much too high.

Ashe doesn’t spot McCree, not at the pool table, not at the bar, not even grinding in dark corners. It’s only when she hears someone mention that they can’t get into the bathroom because of some kid that she heads towards the men’s room and kicks open the door.

McCree’s on the other side. Ashe has to blick rapidly in the stark lighting, too bright after the dim smokiness of the bar. McCree is slumped against the floor, back to the wall, long legs stretched out in front of him. There is foul-smelling vomit congealed in the drain. Ashe leaves it alone—someone else will clean up McCree’s mess. She’s more concerned about the bruise blooming on the corner of McCree’s mouth.

When he doesn’t give any indication of moving, she sits down next to him. There are a million things she could say, most of them snarky, too many of them cruel. She waits for him to speak. He’s wiping away tears. She can smell the alcohol on him, thick enough to gag. He pulls his hat down to hide puffy eyes.

“I’m an idiot,” he mumbles.

Ashe privately agrees. He goes into firefights too quick with no way of getting out and doesn’t have the guts to finish off the enemies until it’s down to the wire. He wears ridiculous clothes, ones that even she can’t get on board with, and smokes cigars that’ll give him cancer in an age where humans have created sentient gorillas on the moon. He’s an idiot, but she doesn’t like hearing him say it.

“What happened?” asks Ashe.

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, an absolutely filthy habit. “I thought Finn…he’d been giving me these looks, sending all this sweet talk my way. I thought he was interested…well, he was. But not like I wanted.”

McCree’s chin trembles for just a moment, an admission that can’t be hidden with a wide-brim. “Won’t laugh?”

“No,” says Ashe. “I won’t laugh.” McCree smells terrible, but she is struck with the desire to put her arm around his shoulder, something she has never done for anyone.

“I thought maybe he liked me. Maybe he wanted to date me.”

McCree instantly flushes red and resolutely looks away from her, his eyes boring a hole into the urinal. Ashe puts her arm around his shoulder. “What did he do?”

McCree puts a thumb to his lip. “Oh, this? I don’t care about that. He just made it clear he…that he wanted good ol’ cocksucking Jesse from juvie. It’s all that anyone wants.”

“Shut up,” she replies. “That ain’t true. And if it is, that’s not your fault.” She can’t find the words to continue, so she squeezes him closer to her. She can feel the bones of his shoulders through his plaid shirt, can see the fuzz still on the borders of his facial hair. Finn is at least thirty, maybe thirty-five. McCree is sixteen. A spark of flame erupts in her chest, filling her with a kind of anger she has never felt before, one that turns her blood to lava. She understands now what people mean by the term “seeing red.”

“Ow,” says McCree. “You’re hurting my arm.”

She’s been squeezing into his shoulder. She relaxes her grip. “Don’t worry, Jesse,” she says. “I’ll take care of Finn.”

“Aw, hell,” he says. “You don’t have to do anything like that. Plenty of guys—I mean, I just…usually I don’t let it get to me.”

“Deadlock ain’t just a name, Jesse,” she says. “It’s more than that.” She pauses, trying to find the right ones, embarrassed by the ones she picks. “It’s a family. And family looks out for each other.”

“You really mean that?”

“I don’t waste my words on meaningless bullshit. Of course I mean it.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” says McCree.

Jesse leans his head on her shoulder, unwashed hair tickling her nose. He needs a good scrub and a decent meal or two before she’ll let him get near her sober, but right now she lets him fall asleep against her, dried vomit on his collar and all. He might have given her the idea for Deadlock, but she brought him in. He’s a great shot, sure, but when he goes home, he’s just a kid who lives with his grandparents. She’ll take care of him. She’ll take care of everyone in Deadlock.

She’ll certainly take care of Finn. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Please leave a comment or kudos if you did!


	3. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of this story! Thanks to everyone who liked it. I'm going to continue with a larger series (it'll be marked as such when I come up with a Cool Western Title) about McCree's life, always framed through other peoples' perspectives, so Overwatch starts next, mostly through Reyes' eyes. This is the last of the Ashe trilogy, however, so I hope you enjoy it!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Ashe finishes strapping the concrete to the feet and pulls the body to the edge of the cliff. All it took was a twilight drive out to the dam built in the early 60s' and Ashe found herself enough water to dump a sorry excuse of a man in.

She pushes the corpse off the edge with the heel of her boot. It's too dark outside to see anything, but she hears the telltale splash and relaxes. Looking around, it's quite a nice night—this far from the city, two or three starts are blinking down at her, and wind of some kind is making slight waves in the water below, ones she can hear from her perch up here. She sits on her bike, but she doesn't start the motor, enjoying the cool air and the glimmer of green grass against burgeoning moonlight. Even the concrete of the machinery around her seems beautiful, like the gray has been elevated to silver in the wash of the night sky.

There's a beeping from her pocket. She'd turned off all communications except the emergency channel, which only her, McCree, and B.O.B. have access to. McCree's out on a drive with his grandfather (not that he remembers to carry something she can reach him on), so it's B.O.B., which means it's more important than the good hot dogs McCree had at that convenience store or the poker game he won last night. Best case scenario, B.O.B. has updates on the gorge she's been trying to repurpose as their headquarters—being located in Santa Fe isn't good for the long term, not if they want to avoid the authorities and spread their influence.

When she opens the comm, it's not related to the gorge, and it certainly isn't from McCree. The air feels chiller when she watches the short clip, sent from B.O.B.'s memory banks just now. It's her loyal butler, struggling against constraints as he's manhandled into the back of a mansion. The video is blurry, grainy like some old spy thriller, but she knows those Corinthian pillars anyway. B.O.B. has been kidnapped by her own parents. They're not so willing to let her go after all.

She turns the key in the ignition of her bike so hard she nearly overheats the engine. She'd ride all the way to their house if it wasn't a stupid idea, ride all the way back if that particular home wasn't on the East Coast. There are faster ways to get there, planes to sneak aboard. Briefly, she wishes McCree wasn't sleeping out on the plains with his old man tonight—but then she's glad for it, glad that he won't see her dirty laundry. She knows he doesn't like the way she flaunts her money, that he secretly thinks she's faking this, that she'll go home when the going gets tough.

She's going home, all right. But not the way he thought. Not the way her parents are thinking, either.

* * *

She stops for food, guns, and a flight. It's only three hours before she's back on the East Coast, stepping off a private airport with a shotgun on each hip and her rifle snug in its holster. Gun laws are restricted by pesky peacekeeping organizations like Overwatch and the like, but Ashe knows how to get around those. With enough money, she can get anything she wants.

Back on the East Coast, she feels out of place. The air is all wrong, the level of humidity too high after the dry desert air. She's not used to so many people anymore, and as she walks through the streets of the bustling port city she spent a fifteenth of her childhood in—more than any other town—it becomes apparent that Santa Fe is behind the times in both technology and money.

Deadlock isn't, though. That's the important thing. That, and getting B.O.B. back. He's been there her whole life: she cannot abandon him now, even if the idea of facing her parents again has her winded. She stops on the side of the street and sits down, legs cold against the bench as she stares at uniform trees dotting a metallic landscape. The rich reds of the New Mexico landscape are nowhere to be seen. It's been less than two years, but even as the days whip by in the thrill of illegal cons and back-alley deals, it seems so much longer.

When she stands back up, it's only a few blocks to her parent's house. It feels like she's marching to certain death, even though she spent the short flight examining her blueprints of the area, like she doesn't know them already from setting off homemade bombs in the gardenias and taking a sledgehammer to her least favorite busts (she's always hated Newton, for some reason—she thinks it's the wig). She knows the staff her family keeps on-site, but she checks recent logs of all the security in the area to double check that they aren't hiring more to keep B.O.B. safe. Nothing abnormal.

She reaches the Corinthian pillars with her face flushed and her heart beating fast, the manicured lawn and long drive she grew up with to her back and a closed door ahead of her. Ashe has roughed up gangs and killed hardened criminals. She puts one foot in front of the other until she reaches the door, passing the still-indented circles of grass where B.O.B. had built her her own swing set. She'd torn it down with her bare hands years later when her parents failed to show up for the fifth piano recital in a row, and the gardeners had spent thousands trying to repair the soil.

Ashe shoots the door open with one slug, watching with a smug smile as shards of wood explode outwards, splintering her skin and littering the front steps. "Oops," she says. "I forgot to knock." Her words echo in the empty air.

The home security alarm is on a trigger, but she disconnected it remotely from the police on her way in: they're probably more concerned with accepting bribes and beating up civilians anyway. Her smile widens as the trill of the alarm barrages her eardrums. Alarms are the sound of chaos. They know she's here, now. They can't run, not with the driving mechanism on all their hovercars disabled. She even slashed the tires of the vintage Rolls. She's not taking any chances. They can't get away from her now.

The foyer is unchanged from her childhood, a big marble hallway kept clean by a staff that rarely sees their employers. The red carpet rolling down it is untouched, and Ashe relishes in leaving big muddy footsteps down the length of it, craning her neck up the spiral staircase, trying to figure out which of the many rooms they're keeping B.O.B. in. They want her back? Well, she's here.

As she's looking up, there's movement out of the corner of her eye. The bodyguards—three for each of her parents. They're trained by a good school, hired from reputable sources, but nothing can compare to fighting on the streets. Two black suits are down before they even reach her, shot in the stomach or the leg, something that'll take them out for as long as she needs to be here. The blood on the marble isn't Ashe's usual aesthetic, not that she knows the thrill of cracked skulls on soiled barroom floors, but she's relishing it anyway. She fires from the hip for the third and fourth guards, her grip on the trigger iron until screams echo in the oversized foyer, bouncing back on her open ears. The fifth guard slips in blood and doesn't get back up. The sixth guard runs—she shoots him in the back.

"Is this it?" she announces. "Is this all the guard you have for yourselves? For B.O.B.? He's worth ten times that." B.O.B. is worth every armed guard in the world, but her parents never understood the value of hot dogs grilled outside in summer heat.

Her boots track gore up the stairs, and she grinds her heel every few steps to make sure she's leaving her mark. The hallway yawns before her, an abyss of empty rooms. She ducks her head through the open doors and kicks the closed ones down, but finds only sheets covering the furniture and a fine layer of dust over items the servants have permission to leave be. She passes her original nursery, but the room is empty now, and the master bedroom, on the other side of the floor, is untouched. B.O.B. isn't upstairs. No one is.

By the time she's downstairs again, Ashe can feel her last meal threatening to rise up her throat. The hair on her neck is standing: there are six guards, but no sign of her parents. She searches the first floor with a hand on one of her guns, ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble, chipping her red nail polish against the cool surfaces of the weapons in her latest nervous tic. There is no sign of life anywhere except the surviving men in the foyer, groaning with agony and incapable of moving. She steps over them and heads to the cellar.

There are signs of a struggle here. Ashe lets out a deep breath, relaxing. The polished floor has been scraped by huge boots, and the door barely hangs on its frame. Her parents must be down here interrogating him, trying to figure out her whereabouts. Like they'd know the beginnings of how to interrogate someone—they'd grow squeamish at the tools, afraid that the blood would stain their designer clothing. With a sneer on her face, Ashe slams open the door and descends the wooden stairs. They don't creak, not with the care her family's servants put into their home, but the darkness is as gloomy as any cellar across the country.

At the bottom of the staircase, Ashe finds B.O.B. Alone. He's been tied up with the kind of steel robe that corporations sell to omnic prisons and vigilantes—Ashe should know, Deadlock handles it—and stacked against the back wall, surrounded by huge crates and boxes. It's dark down here, all the crates casting long shadows, but there is no sign of movement, no sounds other than the soft whirring of the machinery keeping B.O.B. alive, a noise only she knows to listen for and one that comforted her to sleep for many years.

"Of course I came," she says in reaction to B.O.B.'s eyes lighting up, voice steady as she puts a series of bullets through the omnic wire. It takes a long time to destroy. It dates back to the Omnic War: even Bastion units have trouble with it

She doesn't want to ask the next question. She waits until B.O.B. is untied, her hands red and raw from pulling on the wires, her arms shaking from the effort. "Are they with you?"

B.O.B.'s gaze lowers. He shakes his head. When Ashe stands, saying nothing, he stands with her. He starts to put an arm around her shoulder, comforting her. "Where are they?" she asks, hating the tremble in her voice. This was never about her. It was B.O.B. It was all about the investment: he'd been an expensive purchase, the first of his line. They couldn't afford to lose that. It was never a trap to lure her.

B.O.B. doesn't reply, refraining from motions with his head or hands. Ashe thrusts his arm away from her, pushing him away. He held her like this after every missed birthday, every sporting event he was alone in the stands for, every bedtime tuck-in that was just the two of them. It's stupid. She's stupid. She kicks the wall, nearly breaking her toe inside her boot. She grabs her gun. There's no one to shoot, but maybe she'll find someone anyway. She'll show them what happens when Ashe gets ignored. This whole city will remember her name.

"Boy,  _howdy_ , this is a damn big house!"

Ashe stops gritting her teeth and looks up. In the light of the doorway, all the way up the stairs, there is a silhouette outlined by a cowboy hat and a pair of spurs. "What in tarnation, Jesse McCree?" she says. It's all she can think to say.

"I got that video too," he says, clomping down the stairs in boots with bits of grass and cow dung still attached to the bottom. "Didn't take much digging to find the plane you disappeared on. The three of us, we're a team. I can't abandon B.O.B., can I? And I'm not about to abandon you, either."

He shoots her that easy grin. Everything about him is easy: the brown locks mussed by his ever-present wide-brim, his clothes straight out of the pulp novels he likes stealing, even the man himself, according to the rest of the boys in the gang. Ashe goes to reply, but instead hot tears well in her eyes.

"I didn't forget what you said," he adds. He's still grinning, but there's a real tinge of seriousness to his tone. "I mean it, Ashe. We're a family. And family don't just run off on each other."

Ashe grabs his bandana, still intending for some hurtful comment, some sarcastic remark. Her fingers still clawed in the rough fabric, he wraps her into a bear hug. It's hard to believe this overgrown weed is two years younger than her with her head pressed against his chest, strong arms holding her in a way totally different than B.O.B. used to. She sniffs and then gags.

"You smell terrible," she says.

"Well, I did have my fingers up a cow's asshole about ten hours ago."

Ashe struggles to escape the hug while McCree laughs loud enough that the sound reverberates against the walls of the cellar, freeing one of his hands up so he can tousle her hair unforgivably before trying to get her to smell his finger. B.O.B. walks over and places a hand on each of their shoulders. His hand holds more warmth than this entire mansion has ever had.

"Let's get the hell out of here," says Ashe.

McCree winks. "Where to, boss?"

Ashe wipes her tears with McCree's bandana and pushes him away from her. "It doesn't matter," she says, heading for the door. "Not with the two of you by my side."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for checking out my story! If you liked this chapter or the work as a whole, I'd love it if you let me know! :)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please leave a comment below!


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